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Jan 28, 2015

Timbuktu

Islam is a topic frequently viewed through a
limited lens in contemporary cinema, particularly what is produced by
and catered to North Americans. Such is not the case with Timbuktu,
Abderrahmane Sissako’s first feature film in 7 years. For audiences
accustomed to seeing demonized, one-note portrayals of a small,
extremist faction of Muslims on screen, Timbuktu’s insight into
the religion feels like a momentous breath of fresh air. In the wake of
the terrorist attacks in France and Nigeria, the latter of which is
still sidelined by mainstream media, it’s hard to think of a moment when
conversations about Muslims and their relationship to fundamentalism
would have been timelier than now. Sissako has said he was inspired to
make Timbuktu a few years ago, when he opined the lack of
attention given to the stoning of an unmarried Malian couple, who were
charged with adultery. Timbuktu is his attempt at dramatizing
their story, along with other paralleling plots, and it’s a rich,
politically nuanced, and painterly portrait of life in rural Mali.

Timbuktu‘s kaleidoscopic structure cross-cuts between the
unmarried couple and a large cast of characters connected by the virtue
of their geographical proximity. A man, his wife, and daughter pass
their days in a tent, taking care of their small herd of eight cows. A
fisherman sets up his nets in the same lake as the cows drink. Islamic
militants force themselves onto public spaces in nearby towns, making
announcements about religiously acceptable behaviour. A local imam
pleads with the mujahedeen to refrain from violence in the community.
Local women fight against fanatical intolerance as kids fight for their
passion for football. All these stories are loosely tied by a tenuous
link to the decentralized and vigilante local justice system. Timbuktu‘s
first half is devoted to running these paralleling narratives in
rapidly cut, short segments, but the film never loses its fluidity as
the dots begin to connect and the characters inch closer toward one
another.

As Sissako traverses between stories, languages, and religions, the
tone of the film shifts as well. A sequence in the first half shows a
group of young boys playing football without a ball, because having
footballs, or any element of earthly joy, is banned by the local
militia. The boys play as though they’re unaware of the absence of the
ball, passionately tackling and celebrating, thus giving this sequence
quite an incantatory feel. This scene is immediately succeeded by one in
which the audience witnesses a murder. The gruesome display is shot in a
lush, extreme long shot. Its awe-inspiring beauty is at stark odds with
the violence at its heart.

Sissako employs absurdist humor to deal with some of the more
challenging elements of his film—particularly with respect to Islamic
extremism and how it can often be a socio-economic construct, rather
than a religious one. Nowhere is this funnier or more incisive than the
scene wherein Sissako deconstructs the intimidating video message
recordings from fundamentalist rebels, reducing them to a hilarious
tête-à-tête between an elder fighter and a younger apprentice whose
shaky beliefs in the religion and his mission make for a forced, awkward
appearance in front of the camera. These acute tonal shifts neither
disrupt the harmony of Timbuktu’s webbed narrative nor diminish Sissako’s keen insight.

What is particularly interesting about Timbuktu is that
Sissako finds moments of tenderness and sheer emotional power without
sanding the rough edges of his story. A father’s tearful admission of
love to his daughter and the soulful singing of a woman while she’s
being stoned don’t come across as saccharine devices designed to add
humanity to a bleak story that needs it. This is partly indebted to the
entire cast’s sensational performances who elevate their characters
above archetypes even in the smallest roles, such as the slyly
frustrated assistant and driver to the leader of the jihadis. More
importantly, Timbuktu’s procession of events doesn’t set the
audience up for side-taking, even though there is eventual contempt for
the inhumane atrocities committed by the extremists. This isn’t to say
Sissako humanizes those who practice stoning and arm-slaying of innocent
people, only that he affords them the opportunity to sketch their
characters in complicated grey areas, occupied not just by unwavering
monstrosity, but also beliefs, doubts, and human intricacies.

Sissako thus achieves a level of genuine poignancy not simply because
he is a true master of form at the peak of his career, but also because
he understands the texture of the society and the nuances and
complexities of a religion as broad in its variety of adherents as
Islam. Timbuktu is neither an outsider’s black-and-white vision
of the implications of extremism in that region of the world, nor is it
a defiant attempt at showing the other of the side of the coin. There
are no token characters and no fairy-tales designed merely to make
points. These stories are realities that Sissako painfully feels and
keenly understands. Through the filmmaker’s poetic vision and rich grasp
of the milieu, Timbuktu becomes politically perceptive and
emotionally authentic, depicting visceral trauma without hysterics and
eye-opening truths without didacticism.